Randy's Donuts was exactly where a team of teenagers would choose to 'philosophize' over the quality of different superhero movies. The Youth Assemblers—Gary, Stella, Nemestrius, Razeus, and Joy—were all present in the holy trinity of youth: sugar, ridiculous opinions, and an oblivion of consequences.
"Homecoming," Gary said, dunking his fourth donut and dripping glaze on his sleeve. "No contest. It's the stunt choreography. Have you seen the drop in Act Two?"
Stella laughed with a small bell that could have been interpreted as cosmic. "I still prefer the cinematography in Celestial Dawn. It captured—"
Nemestrius rolled his eyes under a hood that did not like being bright. "Both of you have terrible taste. It's all about lighting design. You don't even think about lighting until you're pulling an eclipse-level trade."
Joy squealed and thrust a toothbrush-sized cinnamon twist at Razeus. "You're all so boring! Eat more—feel better!"
They were mid-argument when the Earth-shivering sound hit them: a distant thunder that felt foreign and wrong. The window glass shivered. On the street, cars stopped like deer.
"All right," Stella said, standing with her cup half full. "That was not downtown traffic."
"Crash?" Gary grinned. "Let's go see."
They ran posthaste. The night air smelled like burnt oil and ozone. The crash site was a crater, a fresh raw wound in the earth, steam and ionized air rising. Nestled in the crater like a fallen comet was the boy—Tim—his breath a fragile metronome.
Stella was nearest. She bent and laid a hand just above his chest and felt something like a heartbeat that was not an organ but a pulse of luck.
"He's alive," she said, voice steady. "But we need to get him out of here."
Tim's first lucid words were not a plea but a command in a half-sobbing, half-urgent tone: "Oblivion—coming. He's coming."
They were too late to take it as a warning and too early to take it like a threat. It was both.